‘RED ED’ HAS WON THE DAY due to the trade union vote. This does not bode well for the younger Milliband. He is now in thrall to the brothers he courted with his working class rhetoric throughout the election campaign: but he now promises to serve all the people from whatever class working or middle. Not exactly the message he used to entice the unions and their Neanderthal leaders to his cause when seeking the status he now holds. Perhaps the union leaders are beginning to feel let down (as party tradition dictates) by their favoured son.
Milliband the Younger has out manoeuvred Milliband the Elder who everybody was led to believe, was born to rule. The Younger Milliband however, succeeded in making all the right noises in order to win over the dim-witted, primordial ruling element in the union leadership.
Ed has stroked and tickled the unions; and the six figured overpaid, and generously pensioned brothers have been left believing that they have made a bargain. Only time will tell whether the trade unions have invested their member’s money wisely in a Labour party led by ‘Red’ Ed.
I CAN RMEMBER WHEN, in the 1970s, I, as a Marxist, paid great attention to one Ralf Milliband, this country’s leading (briefly at the time) Marxist intellectual who managed to published his thoughts in various Left-wing journals. If the surname seems familiar then so it should because Ed and Dave Milliband are Ralf’s sons. I cannot believe these two sons of the Marxist revolutionary have so completely vacated their father’s historical dialectic - but ambition, it seems, overcomes all ideological impediments.
What I believe is that both brothers seek their fathers’ Marxist ambitions, but not through any so called ‘dialectical process of history’, but through the minor vein of ‘social democracy’. The concept of ‘social democracy’ was meant to position itself as a compromise between conservatism and outright socialism.; and it has managed to stamp its mark on the continent of Europe since the Second World War. It is, however, a bourgeois concept (as Ralf would have seen it) that, in reality, sought a middle road between socialism, communism and capitalism.
No such road can however lead to any kind of future because of the intellectual gulf that distinguishes itself between the free market and the state sector which seeks to determine every outcome of social activity.
If the free market is hindered in any way through such antiquated ideologies as state socialism which involves the state’s proscribing of whatever human activity and behaviour it deems fit to condemn, then human beings are far better off without the intellectual temptations of the human mind for the creation of perfect society, and should continue to rely upon the free market.
NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME THE trade union’s grubby little paws are all over the result. David Milliband beat his brother in two of the three sectors of the electoral college. Both MPs and MEPs gave him their backing, along with, what in any normal political party, should be the most important constituency - the party membership.
It was only in the trade union section that David came second to Ed, and this with only a 9% turnout of trade union members, compared to a 98.5% turnout of MPs and MEPs, and 71% of party members. But even among the trade unions Milliband the elder managed 13.4%. As it turns out, it was the three big unions to whom Ed owes his victory. And what kind of price such a victory will be demanded of ‘Red’ Ed in the months and years to come by the likes of the UNITE union?
I hope that, in the same ruthless fashion that he disposed of his own brother, he will show equal cold-bloodedness toward the party’s other brothers in the future. He owes his current position to the old fashioned class warriors of unions like UNITE, who will threaten the peace and stability of the country in the coming months as the Coalition’s cuts begin their effect.
It will be then that ‘Red’ Ed either deserves the title, or whether, like his brother he will be able to resist the arm twisting of the unions, and put the nation’s economic survival first.
There is now talk of David Milliband serving as shadow chancellor. If he does and Ed sticks to his pre-election rhetoric, then David should only accept if he can be a thorn in his brother’s side.
After all Ed must have known what his brother’s political ambition’s were, yet he stymied them. So David, in political terms, owes his brother nothing – especially his loyalty. It was Ed who took the gloves off and now David must do the same if he is to remain in politics. If he stays on as shadow chancellor and lets brotherly love stand in the way of personal ambition then he would be better of using his undoubted intellectual skills within the private sector.
Whatever happens to the Labour Party after this shambles, we must remember this; the Labour Party’s voting system is the very one the Coalition is asking us to vote upon next May as an alternative to the First Past the Post system. What we have just witnessed is the Alternative Voting system (AV) at work.
If we learn nothing else from the election of a Labour leader, we must surely appreciate that the AV system is no alternative to the First Past the Post.
No comments:
Post a Comment